With digestion rates of 75 to 90 percent, the Baswood system provides a reduction in the plant’s organic loading, which allows DPS to minimize its burden on the City of Houston wastewater treatment operations and increases the city’s capacity to treat wastewater from other industrial customers.

The proprietary BioViper system requires 40 percent less energy to operate than traditional digestion systems and 25 percent less energy than other emerging technologies, the vendor says. In addition to a smaller carbon footprint, the BioViper occupies a small physical footprint, which enabled the pretreatment facility to be built within the existing Dr Pepper property boundaries. The modular and scalable system can expand if additional capacity is required for the plant’s bottling operations, Baswood says.

The BioViper is based on Baswood’s patented Aerobic/Anaerobic Integrated Media System, which maximizes biological treatment efficiency using the company’s Dry Cycle Aerobic/Anaerobic Digestion technology. As wastewater passes through treatment zones within the system, sequential treatment results in accelerated digestion of organic wastes, virtually odor-free, the company says. The BioViper treats water with a reduced hydraulic retention and increased solids retention compared to other treatment systems, resulting in lower horsepower demands; is internally self-buffering, reducing the need for costly chemicals; and requires minimal operator oversight, the company says.

In August, Dr Pepper Snapple Group pledged $1 million over the next four years to protect Texas watersheds that provide water for its bottling plants. The money will fund preservation and restoration projects at five of the Nature Conservancy’s preserves — covering about 7,500 acres of land — in the watersheds of the Trinity and Brazos Rivers, the Texas Gulf Coast and the Edwards Aquifer, which serve the state’s three largest metropolitan areas: Dallas/Fort Worth, Houston and San Antonio.